Page 5 of The Lasso Master

“Find out what she’s looking for. She lingered too long near the gallery rooms, bypassed two open invitations to scene, and clocked the private hallway like she had a blueprint in her head. She wasn’t here for fun—she was casing the place.”

Gavin straightened slightly. “So you think she’s after the artifact?”

“I think she’s tied to it somehow. The timing’s too perfect. The artifact goes missing, and we, the cops and the insurancepeople manage to keep it quiet and then a woman with a sealed past and ghost-level clearance shows up asking the gallery polite questions about provenance?”

“And Jesse just handed her the keys.”

"Go take care of Roxie. The last time you left her alone in the dungeon, she and Keely almost started an uprising.”

“And if Harper Langston is the one who took that artifact?”

“Then I’ll tie her to the St. Andrew’s, make her beg for mercy and tell me where the damn thing is.”

Gavin laughed. “And give her an orgasm or two. Kinky justice. Very on-brand.”

Reed didn’t smile. “She’s not a submissive. Not really.”

“No?”

“She’s pretending. Testing boundaries. But that body language? That fire? That’s someone who’s used to control and hates giving it up.”

Gavin leaned against the wall. “So naturally, you want to tame her.”

“No,” Reed said, low. “I want to know why she walked into my club, lied to my face, and walked out like she owned the damn floor.”

The tablet pinged. Reed picked it up, thumb swiping across the display as fresh intel populated the screen. The top line stopped him cold—an internal museum memo about a Barroco Morales piece flagged in a recent private auction. The piece had been pulled, the source undisclosed, under suspicion of prior theft.

Then came the connection: a flagged alias matching Harper Langston’s known IDs. Used to bid anonymously on another item in the same series two years ago. Not enough for a charge. Just enough to make him take a very slow breath.

Reed’s pulse didn’t spike, but his grip tightened. She wasn’t just curious. She had history with this artist. And that changed everything.

“Well?” Gavin asked.

Reed’s eyes narrowed. “She didn’t steal the artifact.”

“How do you know?”

“Because she tried to return something else last year. Quietly. Under the table. A different Barroco Morales piece. Never took credit. Just left it in a safe deposit box addressed to the museum’s curator.”

Gavin whistled. “So she’s a thief with a conscience?”

Reed’s mouth tightened. “She’s a wildcard.”

He stared out the window at the dark Texas skyline, lights flickering like distant temptations across the horizon. The woman was a lie in lace, every move deliberate, every word dipped in charm and calculation. She was a cipher—encrypted in attitude, masked by sensuality, and running a mission he hadn’t yet cracked.

And yet... she hadn’t just caught his attention. She’d infiltrated his mind like a ghost in a hard drive. Embedded herself. Under his skin. In his head. A puzzle and a provocation. The kind of woman you didn’t just disengage from—you had to neutralize the threat or risk detonation.

She needed to be handled, and damn, he wanted to be the one to tame her. To pull her over his knee and watch her sweet ass bounce under his palm, each strike painting heat into her skin until she squirmed, until she gasped, until that sharp mouth of hers softened into something raw and honest.

Not to punish. Not entirely. But to remind her what it meant to let go. To give control without losing power. And when her body trembled with the edge of surrender, he’d show her just how good obedience could feel. He’d make her cry out his name—and then beg for more.

He shook his head to clear it of the image.

Gavin laughed. "God help you. I know that look."

"Yeah?"

"I see it every morning staring back from the bathroom mirror."

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